Wilson a winner
KIRKLAND – Josh Wilson likes to tell the one about how he was a born competitor. “I came out of the womb six weeks early because I was trying to break a record,” the Seattle Seahawks’ newest cornerback said Monday.
It’s a pretty good joke.
It is a joke … right?
“Well,” Josh’s mother, Valanda, said with a laugh and a wink, “he’s always been very competitive.”
Josh Wilson gives the Seahawks a rookie who absolutely hates to lose. At anything.
“He always wants to win, whether it’s Scrabble or football,” Valanda Wilson said.
“I don’t take losing very well,” Josh Wilson added. “I play this (video) game called Phase-10, and I was playing it with my family on Saturday to let the time pass (before hearing his name called with the 55th overall pick on draft day). I won, and I was running around so much, you would’ve thought I got drafted.”
Perhaps Maryland defensive coordinator Chris Cosh put it best when he described the former Terrapins captain as “the kind of guy who tapes his ankles when he plays checkers.”
That competitive fire is most evident on the football field. Wilson coddles, pushes, and, sometimes, berates teammates to get the very best out of everyone around him.
“He isn’t afraid to tell a guy what he thinks,” Cosh said.
Wilson’s leadership took on a whole new level during a game against Miami last year.
With the Terrapins clinging to a one-point lead, and Miami’s offense driving, the Maryland defensive players gathered at the sideline during a timeout. Wilson started explaining what needed to be done, and when Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen stepped in to offer his two cents – “Stop them!” is what Cosh remembers the head coach saying – Wilson cut off his coach.
“Coach,” Cosh recalls Wilson saying, “we’ve got it.”
And so they did. Thanks in part to a pass that Wilson tipped to teammate Trey Covington, the Terps held on for a 14-13 win.
Four weeks earlier, Wilson knocked down a two-point conversion pass with 2:37 remaining to hold off Virginia 28-26. A week before that, he returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown at Georgia Tech.
“When the game got tight, the more he wanted to be in there,” Cosh said. “Some guys shy away from the pressure of a close game, but that’s when he was at his best.
“… He doesn’t flinch.”
Wilson was the undisputed leader of Maryland’s defense, and the NFL took notice.
“We thought Josh Wilson was one of the most competitive kids in all of the draft, no matter what the position,” Seahawks president Tim Ruskell said shortly after his team used a second-round pick on the 5-foot-9 cornerback.
Wilson’s competitive fire has always been visible.
“He had all this energy when he was young, so I had to find something for him to do with it,” Valanda Wilson said Monday. “So I threw him in this karate class.
“He advanced from the youth karate class to the adult class, and he was only 6 years old.”
By the time Josh was 10, he had earned a brown belt with two stripes – one level below black belt – before switching sports.
At age 11, his mother finally let him participate in football. It was the sport is father, Tim, played well enough to spend six seasons as an NFL fullback, and was the sport Josh wanted to play the most.
On the field, his drive took on a new level.
“The first year I played, we won the championship, so I didn’t know how to lose,” he said. “We lost one game, and you would’ve thought I’d lost my girlfriend.”
That fire still burns, which might explain how a 5-9 kid can get taken so early in the NFL draft.
“I’ve always been competitive,” he said. “If I lost at something, I was going to find a way to come back and win.
“A lot of people say, ‘You’re too short. You won’t get drafted in the second round; you won’t play in the NFL.’ Well, I hope to show I can play in the NFL, and I’ve already shown I’m good enough for a team like Seattle to pick me.”
And that’s no joke.